The ultimate failure of leadership

It didn't need to be like this. There didn't have to be a Tory-dominated government, slashing public spending, consigning a million to the dole queues and turning back the clock more than half a century.
The Conservatives certainly won by far the most votes at the election but they didn't get that many more seats than Labour. If the current state of the parties in the polls had been the result in May, Labour would have won. If not an overall majority then certainly it would have been the largest party and could have headed a coalition government.
So what has changed in the past six months? That is obvious. Gordon Brown is no longer Labour's leader.
Just what a disaster he was not only as a politician but in the essential human qualities needed to appeal to voters was confirmed yet again by the excerpts from David Laws' book in today's Mail On Sunday.
While Cameron and his negotiators dealt with Clegg and his team with reason and an understanding of the situation, Brown hectored, patronized and showed a total failure to grasp what was happening.
Why it didn't need to be like this is that just about everyone in the Labour Party knew Gordon was a disaster and they couldn't win with him. But, with the honourable exception of James Purnell, they refused to act. If anything disqualified David Miliband from being leader it was his weakness in not following Purnell.
A new leader would have made the difference between Labour ending up with fewer seats than the Tories and getting ahead of them. Those who were scared to remove Brown have condemned their party to opposition.
Far worse, they have condemned the country to the revolutionary fervour now being unleashed on it.